Better Hurry Down To The Supermarket With Your Rials And Bahts: The Foreign Change Scam

THE problem with machines is that they’re just not as good as human beings at pattern recognition. This is true of humans looking at human faces as opposed to machines looking at them as it is of supermarket checkouts recognising coins.

And this gives the opportunity to save a bit of money: providing you’re willing to be a thief while you do so of course. For those supermarket checkouts can’t tell the difference between a 250 Iranian Rial coin, a Thai 10 Baht one, or a £2 coin. And this does make a bit of difference:

Co-Operative stores are to examine their self-service checkout systems after Morrisons banned the use of £2 coins to prevent the growing number of people paying with similar shaped foreign change.

Morrisons announced it would not accept the large bimetallic coins at self-service tills in a number of stores until the technology had been updated to recognise the fakes.

Store bosses say there has been a sharp increase in the number of customers disposing of unwanted foreign coins which are the same size as a £2 but are worth far less.

The Iranian 250 rial, which is worth just one pence, is commonly used in place of the £2 coin, as is the Thai ten baht, worth about 18p.

If you’ve access to a decent handful it might be worth trying: but do note that it’s illegal. It’s obviously theft.

On the other hand if you can get hold of lorry loads of those rials then there’s an entirely legal way to make money. They’re made of a copper, nickel, aluminium alloy which is worth far more as the metal than it is as the coin. So if you’ve some friends over there who can send you a few truck loads let me know…..I can get them melted down for you. And yes, this really is all legal.